Thesis (1996)

• Year: 1996
• Released: 12 Apr 1996
• Country: Spain
• Adwords: 15 wins & 6 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117883/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/thesis
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Spanish
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Crime, Horror, Mystery
• Runtime: 125 min
• Writer: Alejandro Amenábar, Mateo Gil
• Director: Alejandro Amenábar
• Cast: Ana Torrent, Fele Martínez, Eduardo Noriega
• Keywords: murder, serial killer, kidnapping, psychopath, friends,

	7.4/10
	83% – Critics
	89% – Audience

Thesis Storyline

Fascinated and, at the same, repulsed by violence, the young graduate student of communication sciences, Ángela, prepares her thesis on a controversial subject: the exploitation of brutality on visual media. Before long–as Ángela starts her research project in the university’s audiovisual archives, searching for hideous images or videos depicting human suffering–she unearths a dust-covered videotape of what appears to be the epitome of a repulsive underground film genre: an appallingly genuine snuff film. Now, as blood stains the faculty, only Ángela’s reluctant friend–the gore-obsessed horror aficionado, Chema–can help her shed light on the gruesome death of the movie’s protagonist, as, more and more, she fears that she could be next. Can a murder look good on video?

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Thesis Movie Reviews

Another Magnificent Thriller of Alejandro Almenábar, the Best New Director of Thrillers Arose in the 90s

In Spain, Ángela Márquez (Ana Torrent) is a student of cinema preparing her thesis about the violence in the media. She approaches to the strange student of an another class, Chema (Fele Martínez), who is fan and has a collection of violent movies, to improve her research about this theme. She is receiving orientation of Prof. Figueroa (Miguel Picazo), who finds a `snuff’ movie in the library of the university, showing the death of another student, Vanessa, violently killed by a man. While watching this film, Prof. Figueroa dies, and the new professor assigned to give orientation to Ángela, Jorge Castro (Xabier Elorriaga), questions many points in her thesis, inclusive the achievement of information. Meanwhile, Ángela is introduced to Bosco Herranz (Eduardo Noriega), a handsome and nice student of the university, and she suspects he made the violent movie and killed Vanessa. The plot is only resolved in the end of the film. The first film directed by Alejandro Almenábar that I watched was `Abre Los Ojos’. This masterpiece is very unknown here in Brazil. `Abre Los Ojos’ is only available on VHS, and it certainly is in my list of the best thirty favorite movies. The common viewers only know the sophisticated and spoiled Hollywood version `Vanilla Sky’. The pretentious, wealthy and ham actor Tom Cruise impaired one of the most original screenplays ever made. Then I watched the marvelous `The Others’. Last month, his first movie, `Thesis’, was released on DVD in Brazil. Yesterday I saw this magnificent low budget thriller. A very simple and realistic story, which keeps the viewer in tension until the last scene. There is no clichés, the performance of the cast is very credible, and it is impossible not to like this film. I did not know the meaning of `snuff’ films. Based on these three foregoing mentioned movies, I dare to say that Alejandro Almenábar is the best new director of thrillers arose in the 90s. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `Thesis – Morte Ao Vivo’ (`Thesis – Death Live’)

Interesting Film, Vastly Overlooked

Why is death and violence so fascinating? Is it morally correct to show violence in movies? If so, is there a limit to what we should show? That is the subject of Ángela’s examination paper.

As a film made by a film student about film students, much of “Tesis” is metafilmic and comments on the Spanish film industry, Hollywood influence and the voyeuristic nature of the horror and snuff genres. Following the aesthetic of the American horror genre, Angela operates as the “Final Girl,” or resourceful female protagonist that defies stereotypical feminine traits.

This is every bit as gritty as a Hollywood horror film or thriller, and it is something of a surprise that it seems to be largely unknown. Even though it is foreign, die-hard horror fans should have latched on to it. And these days, it is a bit of a shock no one tried to remake it.

Effective use of clichés.

“I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,” wrote John Donne. In this case — the deaths are designed to be one step removed from reality, recorded on videotapes and shown as “snuff” films. Everybody seems to runne even faster to somebody else’s death, or so the movie keeps telling us. We gawk at automobile wrecks along the road, hoping for a glimpse of a mangled body or two. On television news programs, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Anyone can go to a P2P site and download video clips with such ennobling titles as, “Marine blows off Iraqi’s arm.” Who needs “snuff films” anymore? But, actually, that’s not the subject of this film anyway. It’s really a Brian DePalma ripoff, with every cliché in the book. Ana Torrent is the student-in-jeopardy. When she’s investigating a kind of dungeon with a young man she believes is a friend, the door slams shut, locked, behind them and, pop, the lights go out and they only have half a box of matches to find their way through the cobwebs. If that’s not enough, at the climax she’s in a deserted house with a sadistic murderer and, pow, a fuse blows and the lights go out yet again.

As a sinister professor of cinema argues, the American film industry is flooding the market with junk. In defense of our national pride we should give the public exactly what they want right here in Spain — more junk, better junk, bigger junk. I think the director of this film really believes it because he’s done a superlative job of following the formula. For instance, in a DePalma film, there may be a guy that the woman-in-jeopardy might think of as a friend, perhaps a non-conditional love psychiatrist, but she may find some bit of evidence, some small thing, that throws suspicion upon him. I can’t count the number of times some artifact or some factoid throws Ana’s suspicions on a friend here. I mean it. I really couldn’t count them. The switcheroos come so thick and fast they become glutinous and indistinguishable from one another. One’s flicker fusion threshold is exceeded.

Is Ana Torrent really the little dark-haired girl who whispered her way through “The Spirit of the Beehive”? Well, as Marlon Brando tells Eva Marie Saint in “On The Waterfront,” “You grew up nice.” She has no chin to speak of, great big dark wet orbs, clean features, and looks vulnerable and smart, not unlike Thalia Balsam but less loose-lipped and more remote. Chema, who may or may not be her weird friend, looks like Johnny Depp with stringy hair and a beard. The murderer looks like some heart throb exhumed from a movie of the 1950s, maybe Frankie Avalon or Fabian. The professor, although a pervert and a murderer, looks handsome and distinguished. All professors look that way. I looked that way when I was a professor. I still look that way, despite what you may have heard from my psychotherapist or my so-called friends.

The director might think he’s preaching to us about our taste for violent imagery. (If he’s saying that we have one, he’s certainly right about that.) But he’s pandering too. He’s showing us the very thing he’s condemning us for wanting to see, and he’s guiltless but hardly guileless. It doesn’t help to know that we’re watching fake sadism exercised by actors in a fictional movie, that it’s like watching Daffy Duck looking at himself in a mirror, with neither image real. That’s a joke between the cartoon and the audience. Here, the joke is entirely on the audience. The more apt comparison is to one of those war movies in which we witness suffering and see blood all over and the movie is called an “anti-war movie”, but our side always seems to win.

I thought “Thesis” was captivating because it was so well executed, but considered it insulting as well.